Thin Skin: SMS Political Jokes In Pakistan Can Get You 14 Years In Jail

from the can't-take-a-joke? dept

It would appear that the typical late-night TV comedian in the US would face serious jailtime in Pakistan, were he based there. MK alerts us that President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is so annoyed by people passing around jokes about him via SMS that the gov't has started threatening to charge people for passing around such jokes, as "slandering the political leadership of the country" under a vaguely worded Cyber Crimes law, that could lead to 14 years in jail. It seems that should only lead to more jokes. How does one get to be a political leader with such a thin skin?

Explanation:

Step 2: Get arrested and thrown in jail twice for what commonly considered to be purely political reasons.

Step 3: Get politician wife blown the hell up. For extra assurance of thin skinnedness, make sure this explosion is shown in creepy cell phone camera phone to a bunch of white people across the globe half a million times, where they watch it like a snuff film.

Step 4: Be diagnosed with memory impairment due to torture while imprisoned

Step 5: Pledge friendship and your first official relationship with crazy ass China, reigning champs of the "no one can say anything bad about us because it reewy, reewy hurts our feelings" governmental league.

Not that shocking in context

In many parts of the world, there are already laws on the books about insulting the state, its major figures, the state religion, etc. which result in serious jail time for words or actions that would seem like perfectly normal political discourse in the US. This just looks like an attempt to extend them to the latest technology.

I'm not in any way defending this law, just saying that it deserves a more serious analysis than "Pakistan is made of doofuses."

Re. posting to Pakistani twitters

One thing AC, make sure you keep your bullet-proof longjohns on after you do that. If they can send teams of assassins to India to blow the heck out of Mumbai, they can send a couple to Podunk, Iowa to get you too... They may be thin skinned, but they also have plenty of firepower, including nukes!

Dedicate a website

We can build a website dedicated to making fun of him, and only him, until, well even after, he's violently overthrown by all the followers of the very website...In a funny way that's what he thinks will happen.

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